Scientists' Small Errors in Managing Research Grants Can Mean Big Penalties

Douglas Graham, Roll Call Photos, Newscom

Rep. Mo Brooks, an Alabama Republican, and other legislators have taken a strong interest in efforts by federal grant-making agencies, like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, to attack research fraud.

Rep. Mo Brooks, an Alabama Republican, and other legislators have taken a strong interest in efforts by federal grant-making agencies, like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, to attack research fraud.

By Eric Kelderman

It sounds like a mathematical word problem gone wrong.

James M. Fadool, an associate professor of biology at Florida
State University, got a federal grant of more than $300,000 to
study eye defects using zebra-fish. Some of that money went to pay
another researcher, $1,536 biweekly, to assist with the research
and manage the lab where the fish were kept.

But an audit by the Office of Inspector General in the
Department of Health and Human Services determined that $922 of
that